The figure of the traumatized soldier and veteran is very present to the public. It displaces all other discussion, I think, when it's tethered to the call that you must support the troops. The argument in attentiveness plays into both the focus on the soldier and a kind of rhetoric about civilian responsibility towards the soldier.
Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America. A truly remarkable book about the unseen ideological foundations of American militarism: American civilians are enjoined to venerate troops, deferring to their traumatized positionality. The first in a two-part interview.
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The Sinking Middle Class: A Political History of Debt, Misery, and the Drift to the Right by David Roediger haymarketbooks.org/books/1879-the-sinking-middle-class